The colonization of India only started in the seventeenth century.
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American LukeJul 6 '12 at 21:23

8

And I would cast out British colonisation of India as a possible reason. For one, had India been scientifically, militarily, or industrially advanced it would never have been colonised to begin with.
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Apoorv KhurasiaJul 6 '12 at 22:50

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@Jayraj While that is true of the period before the Age of Discovery (at least partially true because European scholars and chemists had made remarkable progress in textiles, mathematics, naval navigation, ballistics, and mechanics before the advent of the 18th century) it is certainly not true for the 18th century period you mention --Europe was undergoing the Industrial Revolution by then. While I wouldn't say that things went wrong for India but I would agree with T.E.D. that they actually went right for Europe.
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Apoorv KhurasiaJul 15 '12 at 3:32

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@Jayraj: I would consider the battle of Plassey "lopsided." 40,000 vs. 1,700, and the 40,000 lost, in part because some of them were bribed by the 1,700.
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Tom AuDec 13 '13 at 15:08

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First of all, I'm skeptical of any question that asks "what went wrong...." - Second, IF there is an answer, it is book length and difficult to abstract.
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Mark C. WallaceDec 13 '13 at 17:36

7 Answers
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Personally, I don't think anything ever went particularly "wrong" with India. They only fell behind the civilizations of Western Europe, not the rest of the world. So the proper question to ask here is what suddenly went right with heretofore backward Europe.

To my mind the answer to this question is clear: The printing press. Nearly overnight Europeans had access to several orders of magnitude more knowledge than they had before (and than anyone still relying on slow, error prone, and expensive hand-copying could possibly have). The discourse this allowed would have had a self-multiplying effect. The difference would be like somebody from the 1800's (or even the 1970's) trying to compete for knowledge with today's internet society. There's just no hope for them, no matter how smart they may be.

I don't think it can be attributed to a single factor like the printing press. Why not blame it on the ancient Hindu belief that traveling overseas pollutes a person irredeemably, thereby stunting the growth of Indian naval technology and ensuring Europeans came to India rather than vice versa? Or the caste system that ensured that the likelihood of an Indian Gutenberg being born into the correct caste to invent the printing press in India was much lower? I'm not suggesting these seriously, I just think your answer is far too simple...
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JayrajJul 13 '12 at 0:13

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@Jayraj - Europeans had backwards superstitions too. Every culture does. You should ask yourself why Europe's superstitions suddenly started to have less influence there. Oddly, they seemed to start to dissipate in importance after the printing press allowed easier comparison and dissimenation of knowledge.
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T.E.D.♦Jul 13 '12 at 14:12

I would classify that as a symptom not a cause. A general lack of respect for higher education and a constant threat of invasion (that caused a general short sightedness amongst the rulers and the ruled) would be the reasons why those universities faded away.
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Apoorv KhurasiaJul 15 '12 at 3:38

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Nalanda and Takshashila universities did not just fade away. They were actively destroyed by the Turkish invaders.
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AraniAug 11 '12 at 9:19

Indians were never good at scientific method to begin with. Scientific method aka challenging/testing/advancing existing knowledge by peers and verification using experiments was never popular.

Most of the glory lies in individual brilliance/theories/work that was passed down as facts and absolute truths, which does not help in advancing knowledge. Most of the Indian scientific works survive intact unchanged today because of the lack of challenges/advancing of these works by others.

This is due to the Indian psyche of not challenging ideas/elders and the inherent need to maintain status quo. While the threats of invasion, colonization, destruction of centers of learning like nalanda/taxilla etc are true, the greatest culprit is that Indians rest on past accomplishments instead of moving to the next thing and advancing what is already known.

Indians sucked at scientific method of any kind, so development of science never happened beyond the initial work of some savant in their respective fields.

As late as the 18th century, India had a cotton industry that was at least as advanced as the European textile industry. But when England conquered most of the country, she felt that it was too competitive with her woolens industry. So England taxed India's cotton industry and otherwise prevented it from developing. Same with a number of other industries in the country.
Instead, under "mercantilism," India was made to produce raw, not finished goods.

Wikipedia also confirms this fact. In this article, it says, "During the period, 1780–1860, India changed from being an exporter of processed goods for which it received payment in bullion, to being an exporter of raw materials and a buyer of manufactured goods."
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AraniAug 11 '12 at 9:26

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LOL. Did they have a power loom so to be "as advanced as Europeans"? They simply could not compete with English steam looms by 18th cectury.
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AnixxAug 12 '12 at 14:16

The advancement of the 'scientific progress' of a society is largely contingent upon the society's ability to create new inventions and integrate them into their society. India's rigid caste system and the adoption of dharma, or 'duty,' into Indian society fit new members of society into specific roles without regards to their innate talents or interests and discouraged scientific progress. The highest ranking members of the caste, the 'brahmin' (priests) and 'ksatriyah' (warriors) had virtually no need for scientific inventions or research except for potentially firearms and so had no incentive to encourage scientific study among the other castes.

The caste system, I would argue, was India's greatest limitation with respect to scientific innovation and research throughout its history.

Do you have any sources for this, or is it merely a personal opinion?
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MarkMay 26 at 8:59

@Mark What are analytical sources besides personal opinion? I do have some sources though: "The Caste System Upside Down, or The Not-So-Mysterious East" by J. Mencher in Current Anthropology argues that "caste has functioned...as a very effective form of economic exploitation" and that "the system has...[prevented] the formation of social classes with any commonality of interest or unity of purpose." While the Vaishya had an incentive to streamline to gain an advantage over their competitors, they lacked the ideological unity with the upper castes needed to fully encourage scientific research.
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AlekxosMay 26 at 15:13